But then he identified the mortar-sound instinctively out of all the other sounds, and automatically threw himself full-length on the ground, and Sergeant Devenish tripped over him –
For a confused moment they were a tangle of arms and legs and equipment and breathless grunting. Then they pushed clear of each other, scrabbling for recovery just as the first parachut-flare burst into unearthly brightness far above them.
‘F-----’ Devenish started to swear, but then stopped.
‘Sir?’
Fred found himself staring up at the unearthly, flickering light as it descended beneath its trail of smoke: it was odd how quickly one’s own side’s flares seemed to come down, compared with the agonizing slowness of the enemy’s, which always took forever, as though they were suspended on invisible wires –
‘Are you all right, sir?’ inquired Devenish doubtfully.
The second flare ignited high above simultaneously with another thump-pause-thump of two more going up from somewhere on their left.
‘Yes.’ Fred remembered, from his long distant subaltern-past, a grizzled major of engineers dummy4
admonishing him: ‘ You are a perfect idiot Mr Fattorini
– in-so-far as perfection is attainable!’ ‘Thank you, Sergeant Devenish.’ Well . . . now he was a major, too!
So even closer to perfection, by God! ‘I tripped over a tree-root – ’
‘Yes, sir – so you did!’ Devenish was on his feet, and already moving – ‘Don’t forget the bag, sir – ’
The bloody bag! ‘Go on, sergeant – go on! I’m coming.’
With no dignity left to salvage, Fred hated himself and Devenish equally as he grabbed the bag and launched himself in the sergeant’s wake, desperate not to be left behind.
Another engine-sound, very different from that of the departing planes, startled him from somewhere away in the forest on his left. Almost simultaneously, even as the light from the second flare faded and another ignited, much brighter light burst alive ahead, silhouetting moving figures sharply in the final fringe of trees – trees which themselves seemed to move against a background of fiercely-illuminated buildings in the clearing beyond them.
The most distant figure stopped suddenly, raised its arm, and dropped to one knee. Almost magically, the other figures followed suit, moving left and right behind convenient tree-trunks and sinking out of sight.
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‘Come on, come on, come on!’ Audley stage-whispered irritably. ‘What’s the old bugger waiting for? Let’s get on with it!’
So this was Audley beside him, with Devenish just ahead to the right; and the American in his distinctive pot-helmet had dropped down to Amos de Souza’s left
–of all the figures, de Souza’s was the only one in the open, and the other big silhouette, which he had assumed to be Audley’s, must be the major’s accompanying escort, whom he had not yet encountered.
‘What are we waiting for?’ Audley’s nervousness infected him. ‘Amos – ?’
Two new silhouettes intruded from the rear left, half-crouching and half-walking, and distinctively American both by their helmets and the rich flow of invective which they trailed. More Americans – ?
One of the Americans was unreeling a line. The other offered something to Major de Souza. And, as he did so, a sudden crackling noise, unnaturally loud – a fish-fried-in-batter sound, multiplied a thousand-fold –
overlaid the roar of the searchlight generators.
Another flare ignited, high up in the now-impenetrable blackness above, making all the shadows around them dance madly as a loud and hopelessly-distorted gibberish of words started up against the ‘Fish-frying-tonight’ crackling.
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‘Oh – bloody-wonderful!’ exclaimed Audley. ‘Makes you wonder how we won the war!’
‘Do shut up, David – there’s a good fellow.’ By one of life’s mischances the crackling had stopped just as the young dragoon had started speaking, so that his opinions were as clearly audible as Major de Souza’s flattening rebuke.
‘Sorry, sir.’ Yet, against all odds, Audley didn’t sound flattened. ‘But . . . Amos ... if that’s Caesar Augustus calling on the Germans to surrender – ’ the boy started to shout as the crackling began again ‘ – they’re not going to –’
‘Shut up, David!’ De Souza waved away the nearest American, who was offering him a megaphone, and stood up,and looked around him.
‘Major Hunter?’ He addressed the American officer beside him almost conversationally, without urgency.
‘If you would be so good as to follow Sergeant Huggins, after me . . . Shall we go then?’
That was the way to do it, of course, when it had to be done: matter-of-fact, and prosaic, and quietly confident . . . not with young Audley’s edge-of-disaster nervous tension, right or wrong. When it was done right, it always sounded the same, whatever happened afterwards –
Always the same! Fred felt disembodied then, as he dummy4
always had done in the past, when whatever was going to happen wasn’t going to happen to him – not this time –next time, maybe, but not this time!
All the different silhouettes rose. Even the two recent Americans stood up, after their recent useless journey, although they didn’t move forward with the rest: for a moment they were ahead of him, and then he was beyond them, running forwards by the majority decision through the last trees, into the open.
But . . . it wasn’t the same, nevertheless! he reassured himself: those were not real Germans out there, in that false daylight – if this was another nightmare, it was a different bloody nightmare, for a different bloody exam!
He saw the cluster of buildings, clearly, at last –
Just a bunch of alien buildings, shuttered at ground-level, blank-windowed above, without any sign of life in them –
(In Italy, they said, most of the Germans will be up above, with a clear field of fire, and ready to drop grenades on you if you reach the outside walls; and the civilians will be in the cellar, if there is one, if they’re still there, hoping that you won’t toss a grenade down among them, just in case!)
They were coming in from the back: he was running behind Devenish now, towards a tangle of bushes, out dummy4
of which rose a black-leafed tree – no, those weren’t black leaves ... it was a holly-tree – a black holly-tree without berries, because it was a long way from Christmas –
Scobiemas!
They were converging on the bushes, towards a gap –
towards a back-door in the gap – and de Souza was trying the door – trying it once, almost perfunctorily, as though he didn’t expect it to open, then springing back from it to one side, to let the big soldier behind him get at it.
The soldier backed up, and Fred saw that he was a giant: not only was de Souza insignificant beside him, but even David Audley was diminished, at his shoulder; and, for a moment out of time, he watched the giant balance himself before delivering the full force of the heel of his boot accurately alongside the door handle.
The door splintered inwards with a tremendous concussion, and he saw a sliver of wood cartwheel into the light, and then disappear as Audley ducked to avoid it; and then, in the same slow-motion timelessness, he saw the giant – sergeant’s stripes, rain-darkened leather jerkin –swing sideways almost gracefully to let de Souza go in ahead of him, as any gentleman might do who had opened a door for his lady.
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Then time speeded-up, making up for lost time: de Souza moved, and then the American major tried to move, and so did Audley. But both of them were shouldered aside unceremoniously as de Souza’s sergeant reversed his original swing in order to follow closely behind his officer. The American cannoned off the bigger man into Audley, who staggered back against Devenish, who stepped back smartly and trod heavily on Fred’s foot.
‘ Ouch!’ Fred saw Devenish’s sub-machine gun, which was an Italian Beretta with a solid walnut stock – an officer’s customized model now rende
red even more useful with a flashlight neatly taped to its delicate barrel –then he felt the pain of Devenish’s full weight.
‘Sorry – sir!’ Devenish plunged into the doorway behind the American.
Fred wished that he had a Beretta and a torch instead of a canvas bag. And it was odd, he thought, that the sergeant – Sergeant Huggins? – hadn’t gone in first, ahead of de Souza. But then, of course, it wasn’t odd, because de Souza wasn’t the sort of man to go anywhere second. And then he was comforted by everyone else’s eagerness to enter the doorway ahead of him, in whatever order of precedence. Because he was the bag-carrier, and he was certainly not about to draw the revolver which he had signed for so very recently. Because, at the best of times, nobody ever hit dummy4
the desired target with a revolver, outside Hollywood.
And there were too many men ahead of him, anyway.
And one of them was Devenish – which was somehow quite extraordinarily comforting –
Now there were flashing lights in the darkness –
Keep well back, Fattorini! he admonished himself: You’re just the man with the bag!
A foul stench suddenly enveloped him, even as different torchlights gyrated in a passage-way, with doors on each side being methodically kicked open ahead of him, to the sound of shouting and screaming as de Souza and Sergeant Huggins worked their way down the passage; and over this panicky rape-and-pillage noise he heard de Souza’s voice, uncharacteristically loud, but also still calm and controlled, repeating the same words –
‘Stay where you are! You are surrounded! Remain where you are – do not leave this room! Anyone trying to leave this building will be shot! You are surrounded
– that is a final warning!’
De Souza’s German was quite beautiful: it was far beyond Higher Certificate (distinction) German, like his own – it was colloquial, as to the manner born –
But this smell –
As Devenish passed one of the open doors, just ahead of him, a figure appeared in the doorway, half-naked dummy4
and half-draped in what looked like a Roman toga –
‘ Get fucking back!’ Devenish propelled the man back into the room with his free hand. ‘ You heard the British officer!’
The smell wafted round Fred as he passed the doorway.
And the last six years had vastly increased his dictionary of smells, from childish memories of roast beef and chicken, and the tobacco-richness of Uncle Luke’s library, and the linseed-oil-and-sweat changing room odours of school and university; and now he had barrack-room smells, and cordite, and a thousand army smells, all the way from trenches full of shit to the sweeter-rottener stench of fly-blown meat, human and animal, insufficiently buried . . . apart from all the good smells, from most recent memory, of spices and thyme and lavender, and olive oil frying on an open fire on crystal-clear Greek evenings. But this was something new –
Another door crashed open ahead of him –
‘Stay where you are! You are surrounded – ’
‘Are you all right, sir?’ Devenish addressed him solicitously.
‘Yes, sergeant.’ This was a different smell –
compounded of – what? But there was a more urgent question: ‘Are we going according to plan?’
‘Oh yes, sir.’ Devenish leaned back towards him dummy4
conspiratorially, while his torch illuminated the American major’s back two yards ahead. ‘This is just going through the motions, sir. This is just the usual rubbish down here – ’ The torch jerked left and right as he spoke, but on the last jerk uncovered a totally naked woman in the doorway ahead ‘ – Jesus Christ – sir?’
Not a woman, but an emaciated child, with thick-painted red mouth smudged and spread pathetically beyond her lips, and boney shoulders above inadequate breasts: and (what was far worse) a frightful welcoming smile on those lips, below wide terrified eyes.
‘Hullo, Tommie –’
Devenish’s same free hand was already on its way, fingers spread so wide that they took her from collar-bone to collar-bone. ‘ Get out of the road, you silly little bitch!’ He spun her back into the darkness. ‘Sorry about that, sir . . . But we’re going up the stairs – ’
‘Cap-itan!’ Another half-naked figure loomed in the doorway behind an ingratiating voice. ‘I am Polish officer – officer of dragoons – ’
‘ Get back!’ This time Devenish swung the machine-pistol menacingly to cut off the appeal. ‘You can be a general in the fucking Polish army, for all I care!’ The sergeant recovered himself as the sounds inside the room died down. ‘I’m sorry about that, sir – You bloody lot –don’t you move a fucking eyebrow! – but dummy4
we have to get on, sir! Up the stairs!’
‘Yes, Sergeant Devenish –’ But he was already addressing Devenish’s back as he spoke –
We’re going up the stairs –
But the smell was still with him: a sour-sweat, old-clothes-and-cabbage, unwashed-wet-undried, peculiar smell – just as all the other undifferentiated human smells had been peculiar, each with its unforgettable nuance –
Then they were out into the open suddenly, through the final door, with the staircase doubling round on his left, with Devenish already swinging round on to it, leading him on – with the crash of boots ahead of them on the wooden stairs.
And-
They knew where they were going! They had known long before they had smashed down the back-door –
‘ This is just going through the motions, sir!’ – and all that had been for the American major – they knew where they were going!
He accelerated after Devenish, with the canvas bag flying out behind him spinning off the wall on one side, and then off the banisters on the other.
And they were the real assault group, too! That was obvious now, not simply because no else had burst in ahead of them, from the front of the building, but for a dummy4
crowd of other good reasons which should have occurred to him, from the composition of the group –
Amos de Souza as its brains, and Sergeant Muggins, David Audley and Sergeant Devenish as its brawn – to the simple clinching detail that he was carrying the bag
—
‘Whoa there, sir!’ Devenish restrained his headlong progress at the top of the stairs, his flashlight beam arcing over an ancient collection of trophies of the chase fixed high up on the wall above them: moth-eaten antlered stag’s-heads and yellow-tusked boars drooling cobwebs from gaping dusty mouths. ‘Steady now! Let the dog see the rabbit, then!’
Crash! Huggins had put his boot through another door, just down this new passage to the right, that explosion announced.
Boom! This time the concussion reverberated from behind and beneath them, echoing through the building just as Amos began his formula ahead down the passage: Colonel Colbourne’s assault on the main door below had commenced belatedly, even as they were deep inside the building.
Boom! It sounded as though they were using a battering ram.
‘If you’d just like to come this way a bit, out of the road, sir.’ Devenish addressed him politely. ‘They’ll be coming up behind us – Major Macallister’s party. But dummy4
they’ll be going the other way, like.’
Boom-CRASH! The main door had come off its hinges in one piece, it sounded like. But Fred’s attention was drawn to his left in the same instant by Devenish’s torch, to a collection of tattered white-faced ghosts which was milling in the other passage, crying out in terror.
‘ GET BACK THERE!“ Devenish roared, blinding the leading ghost even as the hallway below filled with the noise of Major Macallister’s party.
Crash! Another door splintered ahead of them! ‘This way – up the stairs!’ Major Macallister’s shout from below reminded Fred unbearably of his old games-master, with its half-hectoring, half-encouraging note only a hair’s-breadth from falsetto. ‘Captain Hornyanski – are you with me? Sergeant Little – see to the American officer!’
So Major Ma
callister had his attendant American too: Fred looked quickly up their own passage, where torch-beams were flashing in between the silhouettes of moving figures. Was this good honest allied co-operation, or well-founded allied mistrust? Much more likely the latter!
‘Just hold it, sir.’ Devenish restrained him again. ‘Any moment now – get back there!’
With the heavy clump of Major Macallister and his dummy4
minions on the stair below him, Fred resisted the urge to move. But looking to the left he saw that the flock of ghosts were shrinking back into their own darkness under the combined threat of Devenish’s gun, the major’s shout, and that metal studded tread, and felt a pang of sympathy for them: whatever they were, innocent or guilty, they were the conquered – and vae victis – the conquered had no rights!
Crash! Another door caved in –
Fred abandoned the ghosts, with the metallic taste of powder in his mouth and the old excuse in his brain, which he remembered all too well from Italy and Greece: We didn’t start this – and we didn’t make the rules . . . so hard fucking-luck, then!
‘Come on, sir – this way!’ Even with the sound of Major Macallister at his back Fred also remembered the snappy reply from the ferret-faced drunken gunner captain to that anodyne disclaimer: Then what’s the difference between us and your average Jerry, then?
So . . . they obey their orders – right? Hic! And we –
hic – we obey orders too!
‘For Christ’s sake, sir! Come on!’
Fred let himself be pulled, with all the commotion of Major Macallister meeting the ghosts behind him, beyond the first and second doors down the passage.
And then Devenish was pushing past him into the third door, without deference, leaving him no choice but to dummy4
follow.
Once again, the concentrated sweaty-clothes-and-cabbage smell assailed him, stronger in the confined space of the room than outside, even before he could sort out its contents in the combined light of Devenish’s and Audley’s torches. And then for a moment Audley and Devenish seemed themselves to be the main contents, well-armed, well-fed and well-washed in the centre of their stage, and dominating the room’s occupants huddled in its furthest corner.
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